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Waddington called the effect he had seen "genetic assimilation". His explanation was that it was caused by a process he called "canalization".He compared embryonic development to a ball rolling down a slope in what he called an epigenetic landscape, where each point on the landscape is a possible state of the organism (involving many variables).
Assimilation is the process of absorption of vitamins, minerals, and other chemicals from food as part of the nutrition of an organism. In humans, this is always done with a chemical breakdown ( enzymes and acids ) and physical breakdown (oral mastication and stomach churning).
Adaptation is a major topic in the philosophy of biology, as it concerns function and purpose . Some biologists try to avoid terms which imply purpose in adaptation, not least because it suggests a deity's intentions, but others note that adaptation is necessarily purposeful.
The Baldwin effect compared to Lamarck's theory of evolution, Darwinian evolution, and Waddington's genetic assimilation. All the theories offer explanations of how organisms respond to a changed environment with adaptive inherited change. In evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect describes an effect of learned behaviour on evolution.
Through this process of genetic assimilation, an environmentally induced phenotype had become inherited. Waddington explained this as the formation of a new canal in the epigenetic landscape. It is, however, possible to explain genetic assimilation using only quantitative genetics and a threshold model, with no reference to the concept of ...
This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms.It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions from sub-disciplines and related fields, see Glossary of cell biology, Glossary of genetics, Glossary of evolutionary biology, Glossary of ecology ...
Local adaptation is a mechanism in evolutionary biology whereby a population of organisms evolves to be more well-suited to its local environment than other members of the same species that live elsewhere. Local adaptation requires that different populations of the same species experience different natural selection. For example, if a species ...
Adaptationism is an approach to studying the evolution of form and function. It attempts to frame the existence and persistence of traits, assuming that each of them arose independently and improved the reproductive success of the organism's ancestors.